This week we see the results of the US election, which, just like the last one, is - all too often described by reporters as “the most consequential election in US history”. A Presidential election in the United States has dominated our front pages and the TV and radio news bulletins at the expense of Israel’s continued bombardment of Lebanon and Gaza, where thousands more have been killed, and the war in Ukraine, which looks to be reaching a nadir.
None of which is to say the election result won't impact the outcomes of those two brutal, prolonged wars. Nor that the US election isn’t important to Australia. But news media’s role in shaping how Australians think and how Americans vote can’t be underestimated.
That’s why it was a shock when the owners of the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times decided not to endorse a candidate. Both newspapers had prepared editorials to endorse Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Waltz and in both cases the papers’ billionaire owners blocked publication. Both papers have paid a price too. More than 200,000 people have ended their subscriptions to the Washington Post, joining a chorus of critics calling the decision by owner Jeff Bezos an act of cowardice. At the LA Times, the editorial editor resigned in protest, followed by three of eight members of the paper’s editorial board.
Do newspaper endorsements make a difference to the way people vote? And if not, does it matter if the legacy right of newspapers to endorse a candidate in an election is not exercised? Bezos argued endorsement of one candidate over the other would further erode public trust in journalism. One argument you’ll sometimes hear is that audience mistrust stems largely from a perception that journalists aren’t doing enough ‘due diligence’ on the stories they’re reporting, that they’re beholden to one or other political perspective, that they’re not ‘telling the truth’.
But in the US editorial endorsements are generally written by editorial boards, not reporters. They are based on how the expert members of an editorial board have assessed all the news from the campaigns run by the candidates and what those campaigns mean for the health of their democracy. The endorsements are opinions, not reportage. They are based on analysis, hopefully careful analysis, and they are not so much telling people how to vote but what they should take into account when they cast a ballot. Given that Jeff Bezos owns the commercial giant Amazon, it’s reasonable to ask whether he overruled his paper’s editorial board to protect his commercial interests, rather than opting to protect the right to careful analysis of what the election means for American democracy or to protect what trust remains in his papers journalism.
Newspaper endorsements probably don’t sway the way people vote. As Professor David Mindich, of Temple’s Klein College of Media and Communications has noted in 2016, almost all American newspapers endorsed Hillary Clinton – and she lost. But it matters to an information ecosystem polluted by mis and disinformation, with a largely unregulated social media talking to a mistrustful public, that careful analysis of the big issues such as truth and national sentiment is placed front and centre - whether the endorsement is for the Democrats or the Republicans. The critical issue for readers is that whatever the sway of the endorsement, it doesn’t influence news coverage, where impartiality is – or should be – critical.
In this newsletter, Michael is looking at whether the government’s attempt to place some control over the way digital platforms deal with mis and disinformation, with its Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation bill, has any hope of passing through the parliament to become law. Sacha is talking about the implications of Meta paying big bucks to Reuters so that Meta’s AI chatbot can trawl Reuters’ reporting when answering news queries, which is quite the development given Meta’s decision to stop funding news companies in Australia. And Tamara is dissecting the complaints made to the ABC about its news reporting, as detailed in the annual ABC report.
Monica Attard, CMT Co-director